Middle East & North Africa

03 June 2021; MEMO: Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah "live in constant fear of being forcibly displaced… and are traumatised by settler violence", Commissioner-General of UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said yesterday.

He made the remarks during a visit to eight Palestine refugee families at the centre of the dispossession campaign by Israeli settler organisations in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

03 June 2021; MEMO: A 12-year-old Palestinian child was run over by Israeli police in East Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood for placing the Palestinian flag on his bicycle while riding to a nearby grocery to buy bread, Anadolu reports.

"I was on my bike to buy bread when three Israeli policemen chased me because I put the [Palestinian] flag on the bike," Jawad al-Abbasi said in a report he provided to the Hadassah Hospital where he has been receiving treatment.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Three Uyghurs who fled from China to Turkey have described forced abortions and torture by Chinese authorities in China’s far western Xinjiang region, ahead of giving testimony to a people’s tribunal in London that is investigating if Beijing’s actions against ethnic Uyghurs amount to genocide.

LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) — Three European Union member nations and three Middle Eastern countries are looking to train personnel in border, customs, maritime and cybersecurity techniques at a cutting-edge U.S.-funded facility in Cyprus that is expected to be ready early next year, the Cypriot foreign minister said Thursday.

The Cyprus Center for Land, Open-Seas, and Port Security (CYCLOPS) is scheduled to start operating on Jan. 16, 2022, Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides said after inspecting the under-construction facility with U.S. Ambassador Judith Garber.

AL-HOL, Syria (AP) — At the sprawling al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, children pass their days roaming the dirt roads, playing with mock swords and black banners in imitation of Islamic State group militants. Few can read or write. For some, the only education is from mothers giving them IS propaganda.

It has been more than two years since the Islamic State group’s self-declared “caliphate” was brought down. And it has been more than two years that some 27,000 children have been left to languish in al-Hol camp, which houses families of IS members.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents on Thursday pushed for a quick parliament vote to formally end his lengthy rule, hoping to head off any last-minute attempts by the premier to derail their newly announced coalition government.

The latest political maneuvering began just hours after opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, declared they had reached a deal to form a new government and muster a majority in the 120-member parliament, or Knesset.

02 June 2021; MEMO: Saudi Arabia's Islamic Affairs Ministry has defended its decision to limit the volume of loudspeakers used by mosques to only one third of their capabilities.

02 June 2021; MEMO: Yemen's Houthi-led National Salvation Government (NSG) has condemned the Saudi-led coalition, and more precisely the UAE, over recent controversies relating to the country's Socotra island and the Mayun island in the Bab El-Mandeb Strait.

02 June 2021; MEMO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would be willing to risk ties with the US in order to thwart Iran's nuclear programme.

Netanyahu also called for the continuation of covert operations against Iran, adding: "I have said these things to my friend of 40 years, [US President] Joe Biden, and I told him, 'With or without an agreement, we will continue to do everything in our power to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons.'"

02 June 2021; MEMO: The head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, said on Tuesday that the Israeli plans to expel Palestinian families from their homes in the city's Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood will not succeed, Al-Watan Voice has reported.